teaching

Just in case summertime makes you all miss teaching, the French social gaming company Motion Twin has come out with Teacher Story, a browser-based tactical RPG in which you, the long-suffering prof, vanquish your students’ stupidity with a collection of special techniques. Here’s a gameplay trailer of the Beta version …

If there’s one thing a teacher can do to alienate every single non-teacher around them, it’s talk about holidays. Our job gives us an unbelievable amount of time off and it always makes me cringe to hear fellow teachers gloat about it, even jokingly. We really don’t need to add …

“If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.” This quote is commonly attributed to Jack Nicholson all over the internet, yet I had trouble verifying its authenticity. Either way, it seemed quite apropos …

Hello, hello! Good morning, fellow School of Doubt denizens. This is my first time doing a Required Readings post, so let’s jump right in! -Maryland considers new standards for science teaching in an effort to boost STEM skills. –A new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences says …

Although we still have two weeks of school left until our summer break, our timetables shifted at the start of this week. This means that all students moved up to the next year group and started their new courses three weeks before going off for summer. It also means that …

When I was in high school, my foreign language teacher had a live cable hookup in her classroom. The official rationale for this was that it would allow her advanced classes to watch foreign language programming and improve their skills, though in reality it often meant we would watch whatever …

I had a meeting with my advisor today, and after we finished filling out my annual progress report and discussed a plan of action for completing my dissertation, discussion turned to the academic job application process that I will be facing for the first time this fall. An important part …

Once, I had a freshman in one of my English classes. The kid was big, and kind of awkward, with dark curly hair and glasses. Socially, the other kids tolerated him, but he wasn’t popular or anything. He would yell out comments on a daily basis and would often ramble …

There are many things that we, as teachers, have working against us. There are antiquated systems and people who don’t give us respect. There are state standards and angry parents and students who just don’t care. But, just to make our job even more complicated, there are also legislators who …

I was given the best class ever this semester. It’s Creative Writing, and the class is full of sophomores, juniors and seniors. They’re all girls, and they’re all NICE. Seriously nice. Twenty-five of the brand of high school girls who giggle and blush and give each other compliments and make …